DementorDelta - Entertaining Notions

"taught generations of Hogwarts students and never--" Harry flinched when Professor McGonagall's wand tapped hard on her studiously tidy desk. An inkwell to Harry's left turned into a tiny black squirrel. "--never--" The wand tapped again and the squirrel gave a squeak and turned back into an inkwell. "--ever seen such outrageous marks in a subject that should be the most natural--" Nothing about the subject seemed at all natural to Harry but he didn't want to be turned into a squirrel so he didn't say anything. "--most beautiful--" McGonagall's eyes narrowed abruptly. "Don't make that face at me, young man." Harry who hadn't realized he was making any face at all except the 'don't turn me into a squirrel' face, tried to stop making it. "I've been teaching this course since before your grandparents were born and sex--wizarding sex--" she added when Harry got the feeling he always did in class, like he was going to be ill or suffocate or suffocate and be ill. "Can be beautiful." She drummed her sensibly clipped nails on the desk, regarding him. "I don't understand," she said at last, pulling out a worn parchment from a green folder marked 'Potter, Harry J.'. "Your scores on the placement exam were very strong." The parchment was tilted so that Harry could see it if he leaned forward, so he did. He recognized his own childish scrawl at once. "Oh," he said with a sinking feeling as he fell back into the armchair. "That." In the first few frenzied days after coming to Hogwarts six years ago, he'd had to fill in all sorts of forms, paperwork ranging from whom to contact as next of kin--Harry had put down Hedwig--to the parchment in McGonagall's hand. That one had been full of questions Harry hadn't really understood save for a few words he'd heard Dudley use before getting sent to his room. This year, when the required Sex Magic class had been offered, Harry had been dizzyingly

out of place, but whenever he tried to study, he kept getting distracted. Ron, who'd had five brothers to demystify the subject for him, barely opened the textbook, and of course Hermione had read it cover to cover and was now working on her supplemental reading. And a practical Harry didn't even want to know about. "You have something to tell me about this, Mr. Potter?" McGonagall's voice drew him out of his reverie and he looked back at the parchment in her hand. "Er--" "You did not, perhaps, take it seriously?" she asked, "despite explicit instructions to answer forthrightly?" She looked over her square spectacles at him. "Despite assurances that the answers would be going into your permanent record?" She tapped the green folder significantly. Wildly, for a moment, Harry thought it might turn into a squirrel. "I took it seriously," he said in his own, admittedly poor, defense. "I just didn't know--er-exactly what--" "Exactly what?" McGonagall had never had the kindly grandmother look. Now she looked positively diabolical. "Exactly what all that--that stuff was." He waved vaguely at the thick textbook next to the green folder. He sank into the chair as if pinned there by her glare. "Well, I know what most of it means now," he tried. "There are, admittedly, some flaws in the placement system for non-wizarding children," she said slowly. "Surely you could have caught up on your own, so to speak," she went on, sliding the textbook to the center of the desk. She gave the book the sort of look usually reserved for holy relics, or, in Hermione's case, any book ever published. "You have read the text, haven't you?" she asked, regarding him squarely through her spectacles. "Most--" he began, and her expression slipped a little. "Some--" he tried, to see the banked fire behind her glasses leap to life. "No," he said miserably, wishing this chair was like the Vanishing Cabinet and he could sink further into it and end up somewhere--anywhere--else. "Can I help it if the pictures are so distracting?" he moaned. "Which pictures?" McGonagall asked, keeping her tone conversational. "Chapter Nine," Harry replied without thinking.

Calculated, cat-like cunning came over her face. "Chapter Nine?" she repeated with a smirk. "Are you aware that Professor Snape teaches the class for young men who prefer to focus on Chapter Nine?" "Yes," Harry answered miserably. "Yes, ma'am." "Which, if you'd answered without any interference on your placement test, is where you would have been placed." She slid the parchment into the green folder and stacked it on top of the textbook with an air of terrible finality. They stared at each other a moment until she relented, noticeable only as a softening of her features, barely visible to the untrained eye. "I will, if you like, intercede on your behalf." "In--intercede?" Harry asked, feeling that, as reprieves went, this one left something to be desired. "With Professor Snape," McGonagall said, a bit impatiently. "You'll have to work out a time with him to make up the lessons you've missed so you can pass your Wizarding Examinations About Sexual Enjoyment Levels, your WEASELs, with the other students." She eyed him over the rim of her square spectacles. "I hope you haven't made any plans for Christmas." ~~**~~ "Snowball fights with the gnomes, Mum's cooking and hot buttered everything," Ron said, sinking into the armchair beside Harry's. Hermione rolled her eyes. "When you're at the Burrow you can't wait to get to Hogwarts and when you're at Hogwarts you can't wait to get back to the Burrow." "Snowball fights with the Slytherins, the elves' cooking and trying to get the taste of hot butter out of my mouth," Ron said agreeably. "Don't ever change, Ron," Harry said, laughing. "Not planning to," Ron said, taking out his books but not opening any of them. "So, Harry, are you coming for Christmas or not? Mum wrote you ages ago, I know she did." "Love to," Harry said, keeping his eyes fixed on his sex magic text, "but I can't." He felt the weight of two astonished looks. Since they both knew he wasn't exactly welcome at the Dursley's for Christmas he explained. "More lessons with Snape." "Over the holidays?" Ron sputtered, obviously outraged on his behalf.

Hermione petted his arm. "I think you're very brave," she said. He squeezed her arm and tried to look worthy of any appellation other than 'terrified'. He didn't tell them--he hadn't told anybody--that he was spending the holidays learning sex magic with Snape. ~~**~~ "taught a generation of Hogwarts' students and I've never--" There weren't any comfy armchairs in Snape's office, nor anyplace to sit down at all while he was being lectured on his inconvenience. Inconvenience at having to take remedial sex or at simply being alive, Harry hadn't figured out yet. "I know," Harry said, puffing out his chest a little. "I don't know anything about sex. I'm the worst ever. Why don't you just flunk me now and let me go spend Christmas with my friends?" Outwardly Snape betrayed no hint of his displeasure save for the merest narrowing of his eyes. "You misunderstand me, Potter." He stood up, his black robes swirling around his body like spilled ink. "There are very few things in this life of which I am proud, but getting every single poofter through the proscribed sex magic curriculum is one of them." He drew the trailing ends of his robes over his chest. "Now, if I thought, entertaining as the notion might be that, you were, in fact, queer--" "I am," Harry said, barely opening his mouth while Snape swooped in front of him. "You are not," Snape said, waving one hand in Harry's face dismissively. "though why you're attempting to infiltrate the course--" "I'm not infiltrating anything. I'm flunking regular sex magic because even my wand knows I'm gay!" "Nonsense." Snape was right up into his face now, his breath harsh against Harry's nose. "You're no more a shirt-lifter than I am a Gryffindor." "Welcome to Gryffindor, sir! Our password this week is 'ego sum hilaris' and I am so gay!" Harry insisted. "I-" He tried to think of some proof he could offer despite his lack of any practical experience. "I think about boys in the Quidditch changing rooms." Snape straightened and rolled his eyes at him. "Watching Oliver Wood disrobe would give Binns a stiffie."

"And--and in the Prefect's Bathroom," Harry said, warming to his subject, "I wanked over Viktor Krum. Twice!" He held up two fingers then realized he was probably being rude and put them down. With a snort Snape turned away. "Only twice?" Harry scrunched up his face and wracked his brain. "I--I've had fantasies about my professors-my male professors--bending me over a desk--" For the first time Snape looked interested, prompting him wordlessly to continue. "Professor Lupin--" Harry said, remembering vividly the year he'd spent learning to cast a Patronus and to keep his hands out of his pants during Defense. "That only proves you have half a brain," Snape muttered. "And--" Harry's brain sought out another target from the rich field of his fantasies but since he'd brought up professors, felt limited to the rather sparse pickings at Hogwarts. "And--" Snape's eyes had done that widening thing they did when he was really pleased about something. "And?" he prompted silkily. Harry mumbled something and Snape cocked his ear as if listening. "I didn't quite catch that." "Gilderoy Lockhart," Harry admitted, feeling quite as miserable as he felt before. "Ah," Snape said, his smirk stretching gleefully and quite horribly. "So it isn't so much that you're queer as that you have a hard on for the dark arts." ~~**~~ Their first lesson, predictably enough, was a potion. "Proper lubrication is the first step to mutual enjoyment," Snape said in a tone that made any thought of using it seem dry as dust. "You will be wise to carry a vial of this--" He leaned down his long nose over Harry's simmering cauldron and sniffed. "Well, not this. Fortunately for you, it's commercially available." Harry, struggling to read the instructions and pay attention to the lecture, tried to ignore the swish of Snape's robes about his ankles. "If it's commercially available, why do I have to learn to brew it?" he wailed, stirring clockwise. "Because it's in the curriculum," Snape said, so close to Harry's ear that he jumped, nearly toppling the powdered ermine pelvis into his cauldron. "And because if you don't you'll be laughed out of school as the only straight boy pretending to be queer--"

"Not pretending," Harry insisted, but not being able to look up to reinforce the point. "Who couldn't brew it and will most likely be shunned as anyone's lover." He shook his head over Harry's cauldron. "However unlikely that possibility might be." "Hey!" Harry protested. "I'm sure lots--" He made a face. "Well, a few blokes wouldn't mind giving me a tumble." He fastened his eyes on the propped up page in front of him. He was learning that, as big a git as Snape was in a classroom full of students, he was an even bigger one when he had no one to focus on but Harry. "Name one," Snape said, clearly hoping to distract him. Harry resisted the prickling of his neck that made him want to turn around and see what Snape was up to behind him. He focused instead on pouring in essence of intestines--whose intestines he decided he really didn't want to know--into his potion. "Well," he said, trying to think of anyone who might have cast an interested look his way. Unfortunately Harry's fantasies always seemed to be filled with older men, interesting, worldly--as different from himself as he could imagine. "Anyone really. I'm not that bad looking." Snape snorted. "I'm not!" Harry said, stirring according to the directions, which seemed to have been written by someone on a broomstick. "You're too thin," Snape pointed out. "Swimmer's build," Harry countered. "Horrid glasses." "Geeky is in," Harry said, pushing them back up onto his nose. Snape waved vaguely in the direction of his head. "Your hair looks like kneazles fought to the death in it." His fingertips ruffled through the top of Harry's hair. "Rumpled is sexy," Harry said, getting a weird feeling when Snape touched him but putting it down as more attempts to distract him. "Besides everyone says I look like my dad and he wasn't bad looking. Even got married." Snape swooped around the cauldron just as the potion turned a soothing shade of lavender. "It's different for straight boys. You'll never pass muster as a shirt-lifter, if you are indeed

one." He peered inside the cauldron ignoring Harry's sputters of protest. Harry glanced nervously from the page to the potion. It looked like the right color and he could swear that, despite Snape's hair-ruffling, he'd done it right. Snape performed a cooling charm over it and plunged two fingers in, rubbing them together as he brought them close to his beetle-black gaze. "Acceptable," he pronounced and Harry's shoulders sagged in relief. Snape's expression was unreadable until he handed him a glass vial. "Your homework--" "Homework?" Harry sputtered. "Homework," Snape repeated with a smirk. "Test this potion out on yourself and the phallic object of your choice." Really, Snape shouldn't have been allowed to use words like 'phallic object'. "No wands, unless you want to spend the rest of the holiday in the Infirmary having Madame Pomfrey patch your arse back together." Harry bottled up his potion, pressing just a bit closer to the worktable. "If you have any unusual reactions," Snape continued, "report them in tomorrow's lesson." "Unusual?" Harry looked at the pale purple vial in alarm. "Like what?" "Boils, cankers. A sudden desire to sing 'La Marseilles'." Snape was already turning toward his office. "Dismissed." ~~**~~ Harry didn't have the urge to sing anything during his homework but he did call out one specific name. After the last sibilant had slithered off his lips he slumped back on the bed, hand still on the swirled glass paperweight he'd transfigured into the phallic object of his choice for the occasion. "Fuck." He let the heavy glass slip out of his fingers but the name lingered on his lips, a secret he wished he'd not been entrusted with. Especially since he had to face Snape the next day. ~~**~~ "Denial," Snape said firmly, "is just as essential as release." He swooped over Harry's back,

peering over his shoulder. "Denialof what?" Harry asked, resisting the urge to shiver. "Page 197." Harry flipped the pages. "Oh." "Exactly." "But I can't help that," Harry said plaintively, staring at the graphic on page 197 of a cock slowly deflating from erection. "If every wizard thought the way you do there wouldn't be a spell to soften your penis during inappropriate arousal." "There's a spell for that?" Harry yelped, thinking to focus on any word in the English language except 'penis'. "Of course there is. It was probably the first spell ever uttered by some ancient Pict holding a bit of tinder and trying not to think about some Pict-ess. Or, in our case, the Pictish equivalent of preferring one's own sex." Snape explained. "A fur shirt-lifter or something like that." Harry smiled at that, relaxing a bit despite the fact that Snape had said the word 'sex'. "What's the spell?" he asked as Snape pulled out his wand. "Sex magic is more interactive than most other forms of magic," Snape said, tugging up his sleeves. Harry's own wand drooped. "Whatwhat does that mean?" Snape made an impatient gesture with his wand, nearly taking Harry's knuckle off. "It means that the spell is slightly different for each individual. That's why this form of magic is taught at this particular age." His smile, which seemed to understand exactly what Harry had been up to the night before, was horrible. "Then howhow do I" Snape flicked his wand dismissively. "First you will have to become aroused--" Harry whimpered. Another flick of his wand and a glossy magazine appeared in his hand. Muggle, apparently as the pictures, as lurid as they were, didn't move. "If you require assistance," Snape began,

slamming a dog-eared copy of Fresh Meat on the desk. Looking into his lap, Harry nodded miserably. "No, sir," he mumbled. "What's that, Potter?" Snape hissed. "Don't need the magazine, sir, I got hard as soon as you said the word 'penis'." Snape straightened at once. "Yes, well." Harry heard the rustle of robes behind him. "Muggles are required to think of unpleasant things such as sports scores or ugly people naked. Fortunately wizards--" Without warning his hand grabbed Harry's arm from behind, guiding his wand in a downward arc. The fact that Snape's hand was warm was not as surprising as the way Harry's balls tightened eagerly. "Have developed alternate methods--" Snape was saying, guiding Harry's hand again in that slow downward curve. "Of defusing the, er, situation." "I could use one of those right now, sir," Harry said, stroking the shaft of his wand. He turned on the bench slightly, trying to get some distance between himself and Snape only to find Snape staring at his wand as if it had turned into a basilisk. "The spell is--" He blinked and cleared his throat, looking pointedly away from Harry's wand. "The spell is a variation of the Impedimenta jinx." Harry, who was not so much in the mood for a lecture on magical theory as he was in the mood for a hurried wank anywhere Snape wasn't, pressed his lips together impatiently. Snape would only delay telling him the spell if he actually asked for it. Another slow arc of his wand, Snape's hand over his and Harry was hard enough to petrify his own basilisk. He was trying to remember if there was a spell for conjuring a cold shower when Snape's fingers crept closer around the base of his wand. "God, stop," he said, more of a whimper than a command. "Exactly." Snape stepped back a pace, and Harry's hand felt oddly bereft without Snape's on it. "What?" Harry blinked up through his glasses. "The spell. Diosubsisto." He flicked his wrist demonstrating, Harry hoped, the wand movement. "Try it." Harry started to move his wand but caught himself before the first flick and peered up at

Snape with suspicion. "What if you're trying to get me to hex my own balls off or something?" Snape stopped short of rolling his eyes but not much short. "Let's see, then the Potter line would die out completely and I'd never have to teach anyone with untidy hair and a swimmer's build again." Harry made a face. "Queer, remember? Not tossing any more rafts into the gene pool." An indelicate noise sounded out of Snape's throat. "You wouldn't be the first shirt-lifter to take one for the good of wizarding kind." He mumbled something that sounded like 'Malfoy'. "Do it," he said after he'd finished mumbling. Harry flexed his wand arm, then imagined his balls shriveling up like the detritus at the bottom of a boiling cauldron and faltered. "Do it or else," Snape said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Or else what?" A pleased smirk stole onto Snape's face. "Your failure in this lesson will go into your permanent record." Harry gulped. With a flick of his wand in the proscribed downward arc and a silent farewell to his two favorite balls he whispered, "Diosubsisto." At once he felt blissfully better. His balls, far from shriveling into unhappy cashews, simply felt normal, without the need to aid and abet his cock in its quest to distract him. His cock, deprived of flank support, resumed its preSnape-pressing-against-him state. "Better?" "Loads." "Your homework--" Harry groaned, but Snape ignored. "Your homework is to arouse yourself as many times as you can--and at your age there's no telling how many times you'll succeed--but--" Harry, whose prick had perked up ever so slightly at the idea of arousing himself in various interesting ways, should have known there was a 'but'. "You are to practice the spell each and every time you're aroused, to make sure you've mastered the spell."

"Every time?" Harry asked, sputtering. "Every time," Snape said firmly. "Can't I--" "No." "Just--" "No." Dutifully Harry practiced in the empty dorm, a deserted classroom, the loo down the hall from the Potions classroom and the empty corridor behind a statue of Ignatius the Ignoble. He was certain he had the spell down by the time he finished up in the broom closet off the fifth floor. So certain that when he woke in the early hours of the morning, from some dream where he was being pressed from behind over a desk, he let his prick stay hard and made it go down the old-fashioned way. ~~**~~ "Our next lesson," Snape said, sweeping into the chilly classroom, "involves anal--" "Diosubsisto," Harry muttered desperately. Snape halted, mid-sweep, and stared at him. "That was yesterday's lesson." "Hearing you say 'anal' gets me hot," Harry said with a shrug. "At your age, I daresay, a stiff breeze would get you hot," Snape said with an undisguised smirk. "Fair enough," Harry said amiably. "I take it yesterday's lesson was--" Snape's gaze dropped to Harry's crotch and back up. "Successful?" Harry crossed his legs. "Wildly. About seven times." "Seven" Snape looked like he wanted to cross his own legs but managed to pull himself together, stuffing his hands into his wide sleeves. "Today's lesson however, involves anal--" He looked down at Harry who did a quick mental check and nodded. "Preparedness."

Harry gulped and checked again. Still holding. "Since you've chosen not to keep up with the rest of the class, I'm afraid you'll have to practice with me," Snape said, pulling out his wand. "You want me to practice with you?" Harry said, his mouth gaping. "You would prefer a house elf?" Snape said with the sort of smile that said he'd be more than happy to press a hapless elf into service. "N-no," Harry said. "I just never thought we'd have to, er, practice--" He looked wildly around the barren dungeon classroom. "Here." "You can't learn how to do the spells properly without practicing," Snape said impatiently. He started to roll up his sleeves. "Bend over." "Diosubsisto," Harry said miserably, getting to his feet. "Bend over what?" "The desk will do," Snape answered with an odd catch in his voice that Harry had never heard before. Harry leaned over the desk, then thought of something and popped back up, nearly crashing into Snape, who'd moved, not surprisingly silently, closer. "I don't need to, er, strip off, do I?" Something flickered over Snape's pale features, some inner war raging whose outcome was a grudging, "Of course not." Shrugging, Harry leaned back over the desk. "First the spell for lubrication," Snape said, in a decidedly business-like tone of voice. "Lubrimenti," he said and Harry felt a tap of a wand on his lower back. Immediately he felt an unfamiliar slippery sensation where he never had before by magical means. "This effect can of course be achieved manually," Snape said, though his lecture tone was not nearly as dry as usual. "You'll find, should the notion that you are, if fact, queer--" "Hey! I'm bent over a desk here!" "That this method also has its advantages." The tip of Snape's wand dragged down a few inches making Harry want to wiggle. "The next effect can also be achieved, as you've no doubt discovered, by a variety of methods--fingers, plugs, sex toys--" "Snake dildos," Harry put in helpfully, thinking that with the Diosubsisto spell, this sort of lecture wasn't so bad.

Snape's wand tapped him again but Harry didn't hear a spell. "Snake--" There was a strangled noise behind him and Harry thought he heard a softly muttered DioSubsisto spell. Snape cleared his throat. "But as you will see, this method can also be used in a variety of situations." Another wand tap, more firmly this time. "Gapus." Harry moaned. The slick muscles of his arse seemed to relax as if by mag--er, on their own, giving him a deliciously wicked open feeling. "That's--" He did wiggle this time, not bound by the demands of his cock. "Really cool magic." "That, Potter, is sex magic," Snape said. "The effect, you will discover, will not last long or until orgasm occurs." His wand tip was still resting on Harry's lower back. "Though there is a counter-spell." "What's the counter-spell?" Harry asked, rocking slightly back and forth on his feet. "Actually, I've no idea," Snape said. Harry looked over his shoulder. Blushing looked good on the sallow cheeks. "Yes, well, now you should practice," Snape said as Harry gripped his wand. "Normally the class would, at this point, divide into pairs." He looked pointedly between them. Harry felt his own cheeks warming and cleared his throat. "I, er, could practice on myself tonight," he volunteered. "You will be doing that in any case," Snape said, waving Harry off the table. "But not until I'm certain you've mastered both spells on yourself--" He sighed expressively and laid over the desk. "And a partner." "You want me to--" Harry swallowed hard. "Yes, yes, get on with it. If you think this is so distasteful remember you could be partnered with Vincent Crabbe." "This isn't distaste--wait, Crabbe's a poof?" "One who has not yet mastered either spell. I sent him off on holiday with the sort of homework his parents are probably writing to Dumbledore right about now," Snape said, sliding his hands to the edges of the desk. Harry saw the need to roll up his sleeves as Snape had done, facing the slope of Snape's arse. He couldn't see much, not even a dividing line under all those robes, but magic didn't depend so much on visual clues as intent.

"Ready?" "Horribly so." "Lubrimenti!" Harry cast. Snape let out a stifled moan. "Sir? Are you all--" Snape was already waving one hand. "Get on with it!" Harry took a step closer, keeping the tip of his wand in contact with Snape's back. "Gapus!" he said, giving his wand a firmer tap. For a moment he wasn't sure it had worked. Snape was completely still. "Well--" he said at last, giving the barest wiggle over the desk as though he dared not move. "Cast." Harry saw the distinct flicker of muscle beneath the dark robes, leaning over slightly to see if he could catch it again. "I did it right?" he said, letting his feet work in between Snape's stretched ones. "First time?" "Perfec--what are you doing?" Harry was leaning over the thin back, his cock in a state that no spell ever uttered could quell. "I'm--I'm not sure," he said, thinking, even to his own ears, that little catch in his voice sounded sexy. "Stop--oh--" Harry had only meant to thrust once, just to see how it felt, even with layers of cloth between cock and arse. It felt pretty good. "Should I--" He meant to ask if he should stop, but his prick halted the words on his tongue, plunging again against the furrow of Snape's arse. "Youshould" Snape said and now Harry was thinking that little catch in Snape's voice was pretty sexy too. "Should I?" Harry asked, though the question was more of a punctuation mark for the thing his hips were doing without even asking him. "Yes, oh, you should," Snape said, even though it sounded more like a moan, even a pleased moan.

Once he put pressure on his unspelled cock Harry couldn't pull away, pressing against the smooth robes. One of Snape's hands dropped off the desk but Harry was too busy chasing his own pleasure to process what that moving elbow meant. "You shouldharder," Snape said in a strangled voice. When Harry complied there was another sort of strangled noise. He was nearly flat over Snape's back, thrusting fabric against fabric, but oh it felt wondrous, better than the wanks he'd had in the loo down the hall from the Potions classroom, better than having the dorm all to himself, better than-Oh god. Better than anything. Harry shuddered and collapsed over Snape's back, still thrusting slightly into his own wet pants. He was still panting when Snape said, "You should get off." "I just--" "Get off me," Snape clarified. Harry groaned and straightened, holding out a hand awkwardly to help Snape up. Snape pointedly ignored Harry's outstretched hand. There was a tingle of magic as soon as Snape picked up his wand, and the dampness wicked away. "Homework?" Harry asked, with a sense of inevitability. "Oh yes," Snape said, with a gleam in his eye. "Loads." ~~**~~ "in all my years as a teacher here," Minerva McGonagall was saying, her prim gaze shifting between Harry and Snape. "Surely you must understand that Potter is a special, er, specially difficult case," Snape said. They were both standing in front of McGonagall's desk like two pranking schoolboys. Her stern gaze fixed on Harry and for a brief moment he wondered if she was a Legilimens like Snape. "You've had all holiday to catch the boy up enough to rejoin his classes," she said, "and from all reports the two of you are at it--at lessons at all hours of the day and night. Quiteadmirable," she said, but when she shifted her gaze to Snape she looked a bit disapproving. Of course she always looked a little disapproving so it was hard to tell. "His magic is undisciplined," Snape said, not looking at Harry. "There's no telling what havoc he could cause in a general sex magic class." He did look at Harry then, his face contorting as

if trying to look solicitous. "You know what they're like at that age." McGonagall got to her feet, tutting ominously, circling them both. "I suppose you have done your best," she said, adjusting her spectacles and pinning Harry with her focused stare. "How do you feel about this, Mr. Potter? Continuing your lessons with Professor Snape?" "I tried to get it all in during the holiday, professor, I really did," he said. "There's just so much--" Snape cleared his throat loudly. With a sigh McGonagall returned to her desk and pulled out Harry's folder. "Very well, Severus, if you're willing to take Mr. Potter on." "I am. I'll even administer his WEASEL myself." An alarming noise came out of her throat. But before Harry could ask if she was all right she went on. "And if you're quite certain you can handle him--" "Oh yes," Snape said. "And his rampant magic--" "Quite." "Then I'll inform the headmaster and make a note in his file," she finished dismissively. Harry followed Snape out where they both stared for a moment at the closed office door. Then Snape turned on him, quirking one eyebrow. "You're a handful of trouble." "It's my rampant magic," Harry said, suppressing a grin. "It's your rampant something. Your homework for tonight--" Snape began. Harry sputtered. "Homework! I thought--" "You'll never make an adequate poof if you don't refine your kissing technique," Snape interrupted, as they rounded the corner away from McGonagall's office. "You finally believe me," Harry asked, "That I'm gay?" Snape stopped and looked at him and Harry felt his cheeks warming. "I'm willing to entertain the notion."